He couldn’t find the breath to scream.
He fell forwards, face down on the cracked, dirty ground, and a dark stain spread out around him, running in trickles into the drain as the rain kept on falling.
Chapter 2
The land where the South Holderness plain meets the north Humber foreshore lies in deep isolation; a flat, waterlogged landscape formed over the centuries from the mud of the estuary.
Sunk Island.
Detective Sergeant Mark Curwen left his car by the side of the road and followed the straight line of a drain towards the water that glittered in the early morning light. After the heavy rain, the ground sucked at his feet as if the sea was trying once more to reclaim this land. Ahead, he could see the solitary figure of the constable standing guard over the scene.
He was here to do a job he didn’t want to do.
‘Where are they?’ he asked after flashing his ID at the constable. He took the mandatory white coveralls and overshoes from the man and pulled them on.
‘It’s over this way, sir. Near that fence, right by the river – or the sea, I don’t know…’
‘It’s called an estuary, Constable.’
The constable was keen to direct Curwen towards the body that lay on a hardstanding by the shoreline. Curwen was in no rush. He knew what he was going to find. A member of his team, DC Andy Yeatson, had gone missing three nights before.
When there was no sign of the young detective constable, Curwen knew what must have happened, knew it was just a matter of time.
And it was. The call had come through an hour ago. The body of a man, found by – what else? – a dog walker. The serious crimes team was already here. He could see the SOCOs going over the flat damp ground, men in wetsuits in the deep ditch of the drain, looking for whatever evidence was left after the heavy rain of the past few days.
Curwen walked along the track to the small group gathered around a tent that had been erected to preserve the scene from the weather. He made himself focus on what he was seeing, on the problems the scene presented. Curwen’s role was simple; he was here to identify a body.
The path ended on the cracked, uneven surface of a hardstanding. The drain he’d been following emptied into the estuary via a tidal gate: Spragger Drain sluice. A mesh fence protected the edge, with bright yellow signs warning of the dangers of slipping. Curwen looked down into the water.
One side of the fence was broken and sagging. Water flowed past below him, smooth and dark, the swirls and eddies telling of currents that would quickly overwhelm anyone unfortunate enough to fall in. The drain itself emptied into a deep, stone-walled culvert, crossed by thin beams of wood.
Two men and a woman were waiting for him. One of the men stepped forward, a tall man he vaguely recognised. ‘DS Curwen? DCI Hammond. East Yorkshire Serious Crimes.’ Ian Hammond. A good officer as far as Curwen knew.
He nodded. ‘You want to show me?’
The other man held back the flap of the small tent that was protecting the body. Curwen took a brief look. It was still recognisably Andy, as he’d known it would be. The face had the blankness of death that was often confused with peace. In Curwen’s experience, the horror of a death was rarely reflected there. Across the white throat, a dark red wound gaped. Curwen closed his eyes against a sudden, unexpected surge of emotion and turned away.
Hammond said, ‘You know him?’
Curwen nodded. ‘Yeah. Andy Yeatson. He’s a DC with the drugs squad based at Brid.’
‘And you’ve been working with him?’
‘He was on my team. We’ve been chasing down the street dealers in Bridlington.’ Curwen looked round, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Why would you bring someone here to kill them? If you killed them somewhere else, why carry a body so close to the estuary and then dump it on dry land? The drain dropped away beside him, barely protected by some planks of wood. If they’d dumped Andy in the water, the powerful currents would have carried the body miles out. It would probably never have been found.
Hammond responded to Curwen’s unspoken question. ‘He was in there.’ He indicated the deep culvert. ‘He was caught in the gate – they must have been in a hurry.’ Hammond paused, briefly. ‘I’ll need to ask you some questions, DS Curwen. What was DC Yeatson working on? What would he be doing here?’
A good question, and one Curwen couldn’t answer – or wasn’t prepared to, yet. This wasn’t where Andy was supposed to be. He was supposed to set up a meeting and alert Curwen to provide backup, not go off on his own. What had happened that he ended up here, miles down the coast? They must have brought him here to kill him, but Curwen couldn’t understand why. He pictured the dead face again; the blue lips, the red wound on the livid neck. ‘They cut his throat?’
‘That’s not what killed him.’ It was the woman who answered him. She was small with dark hair and a sharp face. He realised she must be the medic come to check the body in situ, pronounce life extinct, before it was taken away.
The body.
It.
‘There’s a knife wound here.’ She touched the side of her chest. ‘It will have penetrated the heart – more than enough to kill him. They probably cut his throat to be sure before they dumped the body. I’ll be able to tell you more after I’ve had a closer look.’ She turned to Hammond. ‘I’ll get back. I’ll be doing the PM first thing in the morning.’ A murdered police officer was always priority.
Hammond nodded. ‘I’ll be there.’ He waited until she was gone, then turned to Curwen.
